The Elder Scrolls: Legends (PC, 2017)
A solid card-battler that failed to stake its claim in the genre.
Nostalgia Factor: Low. Fans of Elder Scrolls lore will be more likely to engage here.
Difficulty: Easy to Medium. If you have experience with TCGs, you’ll do just fine.
I recently took a dive into the free to play Elder Scrolls: Legends. I love Elder Scrolls lore, and I’ve been a long time TCG or DCCG gamer, so giving this one a go seemed like a no brainer. I’m almost embarrassed with the level of obsession I had with Hearthstone during the closed beta days of 2013. Hearthstone peaked around 2015, reporting a player base of 30 million users. Following Hearthstone’s massive success, it seemed like every game dev with a compatible IP wanted to grab a slice of the pie and release their own DCCG.
The Witcher 3’s Gwent and Elder Scrolls Legends (ESL) are two notable examples that followed the Hearthstone craze. Each had a flash-in-the-pan moment, but ESL fizzled out first, sunsetting active development only a few years after launch. Gwent lasted longer and ended support in 2023. Hearthstone continued to hold the zeitgeist through it all, and Magic Arena soaked up whatever portion of the market was left. The craze has faded a bit recently, but it hasn’t stopped others from trying to grab their slice of the pie — Riot’s Legends of Runeterra and Marvel’s Snap released in 2020 and 2022, respectively.
It was bizarre loading up ESL for the first time, fully knowing that this game’s time had already passed. “This game is dead,” I thought as I noted the current Steam player count of less than 300 players. I experienced such a weird mix of excitement and disappointment. I really enjoyed what I was seeing in the game as I played, but I couldn’t shake the sense that I was just strolling through a graveyard. This game will never be what it was years ago. It’s possible that a permanent shutdown may come eventually.
That being said, for a free to play game, there is still much to enjoy here. ESL is remarkably similar to Hearthstone (understandably, considering Hearthstone’s success), though with a few unique changes to the formula. ESL features two “lanes” for creatures to be placed, typically an open field lane and a shadow lane that gives creatures one turn of protective cover before they can be attacked. Creatures can only attack other creatures in their respective lanes, and creatures with “guard” (similar to Hearthstone’s “taunt”) can only block creatures in their respective lanes. The shadow lane favors players with a more aggressive “attack face” play style.
“Runes” are another interesting unique gameplay feature of ESL. As your total health decreases (from your opponent’s creatures’ attacks), a rune will break for every 5 health that is lost. This grants you an extra card draw for each broken rune (a bit of built in rubber-banding to help prevent players from snowballing a lead). There are also card effects that trigger as these runes break. “Prophecy” cards play into this system, allowing you to play a “prophecy” card immediately from the top of the deck if the card was drawn via a broken rune. This is a powerful mechanic that can enable some exciting swings in momentum.
Similar to Hearthstone’s “coin” for the player that goes second (an effort to mitigate the notable disadvantage of going second), ESL offers the “ring of magicka,” which is essentially just three “coins” that the player can utilize at any time in the game. This is a much stronger mitigation, and there’s been some debate as to whether or not this gives the second player more advantage than the player that goes first. It certainly seems to benefit faster aggro decks much more, while control decks benefit from going first.
The game modes also closely mimic classic Hearthstone — casual play, ranked play, story mode, puzzle scenarios, and arena. Even with lower player counts, you don’t have to wait long to match with players, though most of the active players that remain are fully decked out and ready to give you a hard time. The story mode was decent, with voice acted cutscenes that utilize the cinemagraph style (animated still images). Though brief, I enjoyed the free story campaign that is unlocked from the start. I did not, however, have any desire to drop $60 to unlock the remaining three campaigns. You can grind out gold to unlock these campaigns, but it takes a whopping 9000 gold to unlock all three. This would take months of daily quest grinding to achieve.
The artwork is great, and the presentation of the cards and the game boards is on par with Hearthstone and Magic Arena, but I would still give the edge to Hearthstone in terms of overall production quality. It’s hard to walk away from ESL without thinking that it’s just a shameless knock-off of Hearthstone wrapped in Elder Scrolls lore, but at least they’ve done a respectable job. I can’t help but laugh at some of the cards which are essentially just carbon copies of classic Hearthstone cards.
I didn’t tarry long, but I did enjoy my time exploring this solid DCCG, in spite of its clear Hearthstone parrotry. The familiar names and faces of Elder Scrolls lore were a nice touch for me. I can’t recommend investing any money into this abandoned game, but if you love card games, there’s at least a few hours of fun to be had here.